


yes, your highness

by manticoremoons



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Crack, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Crack, Hand Jobs, Louis Tomlinson/Liam Payne - Freeform, M/M, Niall Horan/Louis Tomlinson - Freeform, Niall Horan/Louis Tomlinson/Liam Payne, OT5, You Have Been Warned, Zayn-centric, hints of - Freeform, the crackiest of crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-17
Updated: 2013-07-17
Packaged: 2017-12-20 10:23:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,130
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/886146
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manticoremoons/pseuds/manticoremoons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“Who even takes food from hook-nosed strangers with bright red eyes, for god’s sake?” Zayn punctuates his question with a swift kick at a tree trunk and continues pacing through the pain in his big toe. “I mean, surely they teach that in How to be a Prince Studies?”</i>
</p><p> </p><p> </p><p> </p><p>Zayn is a grumpy knight who's grown tired of the endless grind of war. When the offer of a job to escort the prince of the realm to his ancestral home in time for his betrothal arises - and the pay is enough to set him up for a life of leisure, he takes it with open arms. He doesn't count on Prince Harold being the clumsiest, most infuriating, trouble-mongering creature with a certain death wish he's ever had the misfortune to meet...</p>
            </blockquote>





	yes, your highness

**Author's Note:**

> So, there are numerous gif sets of Zayn "rescuing" his band-mates, whether it be from killer moths or the follies of doing terrible things with Miso soup. This story was mostly yanked out of me in response to the recent gif set of Zayn saving Harry from the fire machine, and the fact that Harry makes a pretty great damsel in distress to Zayn's penchant for melodrama and playing knight in shining armour. 
> 
> This story is crack to the core. It's set in a mythical land where history, geography, logic are irrelevant. It's a pseudo-semi-medieval realm with mythical forest creatures, potentially poisonous apples, references to nation states that probably shouldn't exist and all sorts of good stuff. Any and all references are for the purposes of absurdity and nothing more or less.
> 
> Thanks, Olu for encouraging me and reading this and laughing at me, and sometimes at my awful jokes.

Zayn receives the missive from the castle at a few gongs after midnight. It's exactly the sort of cloak-and-dagger nonsense he expects from royalty but he won't complain. He reads the note with all its extravagant sentences and curlicues, the deep rich smell of high-quality ink and the oily wax seal set in the shape of a flower. He packs his bag, he'll travel light for this job. Ferrying a young, immeasurably spoiled princeling across the realm to the royal family’s winter castle so he can begin his betrothal celebrations shouldn't be that hard of a trip. One, perhaps two days at the most and then he'll be able to collect his payment and disappear. He sits down to map out a workable route, avoiding any and all mountain trails, and anything that veers in the direction of some of the Dire Forests to the east. While bad things can happen anywhere, he'd rather not tempt fate by going where he's sure to run into a bad-tempered goblin or a foul-breathed manticore. If all goes according to plan with His Royal Highness, Prince Harold, there will be no fanfare, no large travelling party to slow them down in every single village, only three horses at the most and a bag of supplies a-piece. And they'll get there before sundown in three days at the most.

He’s already counting the minutes until this mission is completed. If it all goes well, he'll finally have the means to do what he’s wanted to do for years now—find a measure of peace and quiet.

 

-

 

He didn’t ask for this. A shrill scream splits the air and he winces at the sound of it.

No. He _really_ didn’t ask for this. It’s early, the sun barely peeking over the trees and the farthest points of the sky still unlit, pinprick stars gleaming faintly. Of course, he would know exactly what time it was if they hadn't been set upon by robbers within five minutes of leaving the castle, and if those robbers hadn’t stolen almost every single thing of value he owned—apart from his sword and the dagger he kept hidden in his left boot and his mother’s old wedding ring.

“Help! Please, help me!” The scream is even louder this time, and Zayn is unsure whether that sort of sound should even be humanly possible.

He briefly considers turning himself right around and walking in the opposite direction from the hysterical screeching. It would be so easy. He could bugger off to the village they passed by yesterday afternoon after being forced to walk on foot for hours because those feckless vagabonds had stolen their horses and the fancy chariot the young princeling had insisted on driving. He could find the nearest tavern, and use his last penny to purchase a buxom lass or a strapping lad, maybe both at the same time, and a tankard of ale and happily forget the day he met His Royal Highness Prince Harold Edward Styles.

But he _can’t_. It’s not just because there’s a boon waiting for him if he delivers the spoiled little brat unharmed, the sort of boon that’ll let him settle down in some quiet hamlet on a small farm with a pair of cows and a puppy or two, a library of books, and maybe an easel with some paints to occupy himself for the rest of his earthly existence. And the promise of that life is irresistible, he can taste it on the tip of his tongue—freedom.

But there’s also that niggling, nagging pinch of guilt.

It’s absurd. He’s fought in campaigns from the foot to the head of England, bled out on fields across the Continent, marched alongside the most brutal, blood-hewn, scar-mapped soldiers ever known, felt the life of a man bleed out under his own hands, twisted necks until the bones poked out like those of a chicken without flinching (well, not much, he’s never liked the sight of bones poking through skin).

But this one man—boy, really, with his tossed curls, eyes that sparkle like dew-wet grass in the spring, naive and young (so, so young)—he cannot seem to abandon him.

It would’ve been easy to do so many times during the past two days. The twit couldn’t even keep his foot on a path for more than five minutes despite repeated warnings that there were ogres and wolves and wall-eyed imps crawling all over this forest.

 

First, there was the horde of screaming women that chased after their little caravan barely five minutes after leaving the castle. If the prince had allowed them to go in secret, under cover of darkness, like he’d planned, the chaos of the situation might have been avoided. But no, he just had to greet his simpering, screaming devotees. Zayn had watched as he’d tossed one of them a rose and listened to the chorus of pitched sighs that followed. He’d seen the prince smirk happily as at least three of those women fainted dead away in his presence. So, needless to say, that had done away with any hopes of riding through the next few towns undetected. It was no wonder they’d been attacked by the gang of bandits, leading to his current watch-less, horse-less state. Then, when they stopped in a village to see if they could barter for some much-needed supplies—a blanket or two, a loaf of bread—the prince had seen fit to approach multiple rotten-toothed, grey-haired old men for 'a spot of conversation', and ended up being challenged to several duels and propositioned inappropriately by at least one. Zayn had been forced to drag the prince away from that offer with a very firm hand. As if that wasn’t enough, he’d managed to wander into a nest of blue-bellied hornets, creatures that were notoriously hard to goad into anger—but such a challenge was likely irresistible to Prince Harold, and Zayn had been forced to drag the boy out by his foot while he kicked and screamed and complained about getting stung on his precious royal nose.

It truly would be easy as breathing to just leave him here to die.

But there lies the catch.

The same catch that has Zayn grumbling, “I’m coming,” as he runs towards the sound of that panicked voice, his ears prickling to determine just what he’s coming up against and how many of them there are, and his brain already running through several permutations and strategies of attack that will get him and his unwanted charge out of this alive without further injury given that he’s already nursing a cut to the side.

See, the thing with Zayn is that he’s never been known to do a single thing in his life that might be considered easy.  And he’s, unfortunately, not about to start now.

 

-

 

“I hope you’ve learned your lesson now.” He hacks away at the brambly vines to clear the path for them, his arm working like a bellows, sweat dribbling down his back and soaking his already damp shirt with the effort.

Prince Harry has yet to say a word about the fact that Zayn has just saved his royal arse from not one—but _two_ hump-backed trolls with nothing but a sword and the skin of his teeth. Literally, who knew that hump-backed trolls with magenta hair could have such mean right hooks? His jaw is still smarting and he’ll need to find some eucalyptus leaves to take the sting of those sharp-ridged knuckles away.

“I did warn you not to go wandering off but of course you wouldn’t listen.” Zayn has always been a humble person but he’s never been above rendering a good lecture, it’s the burden that comes with so often being right.

No answer.

Zayn continues his speech with feeling—he once had hopes to join a theatre troupe so he’s very sure that it’s a convincing monologue. “It’s not safe to go out into these woods alone. There are poisonous spiders, wild dogs with teeth to their knees, mountain lions that could snatch your hair clear off your head with one swipe of a paw, mushrooms that could make you swear you were flying in space—although those aren’t always so bad, let me tell you.” He laughs at his own joke and indulges in a treasured memory. Once, he and Liam smoked a pair of mushrooms they found on a forest floor and they’d woken up three days later naked as the day they were born covered in bright red face paints they stole from a dancing girl, Zayn’s arse splotched in a bright orange handprint that looked remarkably like Liam’s. They didn’t speak of it again. Liam hadn’t even been able to look in the direction of Zayn’s legs without turning red as a ripe tomato for weeks after.

Still no response.

Zayn huffs in annoyance. “Are you sulking? Because I hate sulkers.” He turns around to face the pouting prince and finds—nothing but air. Not being a person inclined to mindless panic, Zayn takes a deep breath, and then another, and then he just yells.

He starts to run blindly through the forest, backtracking to the last point he heard the loud shuffle of feet behind him and rears back when he finds Harry smiling at snaggle-toothed creature, reaching out to take a particularly juicy-looking apple from her outstretched hand. Zayn looks at the creature—who is actually a woman, tufts of bright red hair peeking out of a voluminous hooded cloak, with gleaming red eyes, and a hungry, snake-like tongue slipping between her teeth as she watches Harry polish the apple on his velveteen coat before he raises it to his mouth.

Before Zayn even has the wherewithal to scream, “No!” Harry’s taken a large bite out of the fruit and is swiftly turning the colour of cold, blue marble. The forest hag throws her head back and cackles in a predictable fashion while Zayn rushes to catch Harry’s falling body.

“What did you do, you foul witch?”

“Forest hag, actually,” she says pointing to herself, and the red eyes look down at him piteously. “I’ve cast a spell on your naïve little princeling.”

“Yes, well that’s fairly obvious, isn’t it?” Zayn stares at Harry whose skin is now the colour of the crystalline snow he once saw skimming the tips of the Alps in early spring, white and near-blindingly so. “How do I fix it?”

She stands above them, watches Zayn’s hands skim the now stone-like cheek of the man on the ground. He looks up at her and he’s not ashamed to show how panicked he is and something shifts in her eyes. “Well, this is a very advanced spell, you see. It’s not very easy to reverse. But, there’s a poem that goes with it and therein you will find the cure.”

Zayn manages not to roll his eyes, only just. “All right, out with it.”

 _“Fair thee, fair thy,_  
 _Oh, the apple of thine eye_  
 _To repair a folly such as this_  
 _One must render true love’s kiss_.”

He definitely rolls his eyes at that, “That’s a nonsensical poem, you know that right?”

The hag shrugs, the act making her too-big cloak jerk inelegantly around her face, “Do you have any idea how difficult rhyming couplets can be? Whatever, you’ve got your cure, and now, I must away!” She says the last with a flourish and a toss of her hand, and promptly disappears in a cloud of sparkling smoke.

Zayn shakes his head, looks down at his unconscious charge and feels a cold fist of dread in his stomach.

 

-

 

“Who even takes food from hook-nosed strangers with bright red eyes, for god’s sake?” Zayn punctuates his question with a swift kick at a tree trunk and continues pacing through the pain in his big toe. “I mean, surely they teach that in _How to be a Prince Studies_?” He pauses to gaze down at the still dead-looking prince and mumbles, “Idiot,” except the word comes out far more affectionate than it perhaps should. He shakes his head and carries on burning a hole in the ground.

They’ve been stuck here for more than three hours now and Zayn has yet to find a solution. He hasn’t had any meaningful conversation with the prince in the time they’ve known each other, so who knows if the boy’s ever been in love. He doubts the arranged marriage he’s preparing for now is a love match—the prince hasn’t even mentioned his future spouse by name. He pities the person foolish enough to love _him_ , that’s for sure.

“One must render true love’s kiss,” he repeats the rhyme under his breath trying to find some form of loophole in the words. “One must render true love’s kiss, one must—I’ve got it!”

A rule of thumb for anyone who comes into contact with supernatural creatures of the mischievous variety—elves, imps, talking animals, sphinxes, manticores, witches, hags and the like—is to treat any shoddily-recited rhyme or riddle with a dash of scepticism. That sort always made things up on the fly, which was part of the reason their couplets were so rubbish—but who was to say that she actually meant “true love”? What was love, anyway? A foolish concept that led a person down a road of disaster and mistakes you could never erase, that’s what.

Zayn nods and strides to the corpse-like prince. He will try this one thing. And if he fails, he’ll be able to say he kissed a prince. And if he succeeds… well he’ll also be able to say he kissed a prince while he was unconscious and possibly dead and unable to remember that he’d been kissed in the first place. On second thought, perhaps he’ll never tell anyone of this deed.

He clears his throat officiously, and leans over the prince, meaning to press a quick, perfunctory peck on the frozen pink lips. But stops himself a hairsbreadth away to take it in, take in what he’s about to do and the person he’s going to do it to, and what he sees makes his heart stutter. Even like this, skin translucent and pale as the moon, he can’t deny the prince is—handsome, dusky lashes sweeping across his cheeks, dark hair at his brow, and his full mouth. Zayn lets out a puff of air as his gaze runs over the man one last time—if this works, this will probably be the most pleasant interaction he’ll have with Prince Harry. And perhaps a part of him wants to savour that—if only for a moment.

He ducks down, slowly, carefully and presses his lips to the cold ones beneath. It’s sort of unpleasant really—like kissing a dead fish—but he powers through and then there’s movement, infinitesimal but undeniably there.

The responsible thing to do would be to pull back, see if his handiwork has been effective.

But he doesn’t do that, he can’t. Instead he turns his head sideways, takes Harry’s plump lower lip in between his own, and sucks gently. And there’s more than a twitch this time and he feels an answering push from a mouth that isn’t frigidly cold but warm and alive and—

“What are you doing?”

Zayn’s eyes shoot open to meet the leafy-green irises staring up at him.

 

-

 

They don’t talk about it.

Harry asks, of course, and Zayn feeds him some long rambling story about the old hag and something about a kiss, and then spends a good five minutes shouting about how Harry was irresponsible and woefully gullible and that he was now forbidden to walk behind Zayn because who knew what trouble he could get himself into without Zayn to keep a beady eye on him.

By the time he’d finished his diatribe, Harry had lost interest in the conversation. Which is exactly what he’d planned for him to do.

As he follows the young prince down to a clearing they spotted near a stream, a perfect place to set up camp, Zayn doesn’t think about the words of the poem, about _true_ love’s kiss and all that rigmarole. He doesn’t think about the fact that he kissed Prince Harry and started to like it. And he certainly doesn’t think about how that brief instant of the prince returning his kiss made his skin tingle. He doesn’t think about anything at all.

 

-

 

They settle down for the night, Zayn leaning against a gnarled tree with the fire spitting and crackling at his feet. Harry is lying on the ground, his coat a makeshift pillow, the sharp planes of his face lit up by the orange glow.

It’s a warm night, thankfully. Summers here can be capricious at best. Zayn hums under his breath and formulates plans for the next leg of their trip, they need to find a village to re-supply, perhaps get a change of clothes—his own chambray shirt is covered in mud, and slime, troll snot and blood.

“You’re bleeding.”

He looks down at his abdomen and presses his finger into the now-dried patch on his shirt, feels a twinge in the skin beneath. It’s a long cut but not overly deep. “I’m fine.”

“But—”

“I’ve had much worse than this, Prince Harold,” Zayn interrupts. “This cut is but children’s play in comparison, I assure you.”

Harry’s brows furrow and Zayn might think it’s concern if he wasn’t entirely sure the young prince doesn’t give a damn about anyone save himself and perhaps his favourite horse—people like him never do.

But his sparkling green eyes light up, and a second later, he asks, “Tell me about all the places you’ve been to, please.” The request is delivered with only a shadow of the prince’s usual imperiousness, but there’s something underneath that too, a curiosity, excitement even.

“I wouldn’t even know where to start,” Zayn says. He’s not always been a good talker even in such intimate settings. But there’s something about the look on Harry’s face in the firelight, the way he tugs his lower lip between his teeth with barely-hidden impatience as if every word that might come out of Zayn’s mouth will be the most important thing he’s ever heard. So he tells him. Tells him about marching all the way to Rome until his feet cracked from blisters (he leaves out the disgusting details), and seeing firebirds sipping on the shore of the Seine, and the one and only time he saw a unicorn in Rolfe Valley and tricked his company into circling back so that none of the others would see it, as they’d surely have tried to kill it. He tells him about the awe-inspiring sculptures at Selous, the ones that rise out of the sand like monsters except they’re too beautiful for that, finely-carved even down to the littlest toe. And the sea monsters he saw off the coast of Libya and the fierce women who’d tamed them and used them for commerce, the shirtless Norseman who didn’t talk except to scream and wave large clubs in the air, and druids in Ireland, their blue-grey painted faces and their bodies strewn with magical tattoos, and of the canniest woman he’d ever met in Hong Kong, and the way she had taught him a little of how to move without being seen. He tells him all, even the silliest adventures, and Harry listens rapt, his chin cupped in his hand and a glazed look in his eyes as though he’s imagining each story in his head.

When Zayn trails into silence, Harry sighs wistfully, and says, “I’ve dreamed of going on an adventure—but I’m the youngest son in the family of the richest kingdom this side of the Channel, I doubt my mother would let me.” His eyes drop and there’s a sad cast to the curve of his mouth that Zayn wishes he could wipe away.

“Trust me, it’s not so much of an adventure when there are fields of men dying around you and you can do little to stop it; when you can smell the fresh blood on the air like a slap to the face, when you can see their innards steaming in the dawn sun like the contents of a bubbling cauldron—I only told you the best parts. These ‘adventures’ aren’t always so pleasant.”

He is quiet for a few moments, and then he says softly, “Thank you.”

Zayn pauses in the act of readying his bed for the night, and looks at the contemplative prince who is staring at the dying embers. “For what?”

“For saving my life—four times.” He’s rueful, a tinge of red at the cheeks.

Feeling that odd warmth in his gut at the words—which he ignores—Zayn smiles softly. “You’re welcome—you can be sure of one thing, Prince Harry, I will _always_ save you.”

Harry’s eyes shoot up to look at him and there is something bright, almost hopeful in them, a reflection from the fire most likely.

Zayn continues, settling comfortably into his pillow and crossing his legs at the ankles, “After all,” he looks at his companion, “I’m being paid a very good sum of money to do so and deliver you safely to your mother’s warm bosom.”

And the light in the dazzling green eyes dies, and Zayn thinks he must have been imagining it in the first place. But the hard glint that replaces the glow makes him shiver.

Harry turns onto his side and mutters a sullen “good night.” Zayn watches him for a moment, or perhaps a little more than that, and turns onto his left side to try to fall asleep too.

 

-

 

They run into a spot of good luck at noon the next day. Zayn is too tired and worn and irritable after a morning of monosyllabic replies to his friendly questions to even look a gift horse in the mouth. Instead, he whoops, waves his fist in the air and practically jumps on it because the horse in question comes in the form of Liam James Payne, brilliant soldier and most excellent best friend.

After he and Harry have managed to stuff their faces full of Liam’s bread, cheese and smoked venison, and he fairly collapses under the weight of his own bulging stomach, Zayn asks, “What are you even doing here, Liam?”

Liam has been watching them with a bemused smile as he directs his small party of ten or so knights to set up a day-camp for a brief respite from their travel. His eyes crinkle up with excitement. “Oh, I sent you a letter about this, Zayn!” Zayn hasn’t read a single letter Liam’s sent him in the last five years—trying to decipher his best friend’s appalling penmanship, even worse grammar and frankly disturbing spelling is simply too exhausting. Liam notes his blank stare and huffs, “Are you _still_ refusing to read my letters? Some friend you are! I’ll have you know I’ve gotten much better at letter-writing of late.”

Zayn merely arches his brow, and says, “I highly doubt that.”

“Well, you’ll never know unless you bother to open one of my missives, humph.” Liam tries to look offended and it lasts for approximately five seconds before he launches into a mostly coherent summary of his letter: “I’m going to Scotland, to attend the Highland Academy of Bardmanship and Most Fine Musical Arts.”

Zayn and Harry blink.

The underwhelming reception hits Liam, so he continues, “You know, I told you this already, Zayn—it’s music. I’m going to study music just like I always said I would. I’ve finally found a way to pursue my dream of being the greatest bard England has ever seen.”

Zayn doesn’t think he’s met anyone more unlikely to be a bard than Liam Payne but there’s no way he’ll crush the squinty-eyed smile off his face, it would be like kicking a puppy. He’s not entirely cruel. Besides, if anyone has the grit to go actually become the most unlikely bard to ever bard, it’s Liam.

And Zayn can admit, as he watches his friend wax lyrical about his precious academy and all the famous bards who’ve come out of it with an incandescent glow in his eyes, words tripping out of his mouth from all the enthusiasm, to having a sour pip of jealousy. He wishes he could have a dream like that, hold it that close to his heart, and be willing to undergo intense ridicule and great difficulty to make it real and tangible. He supposes that his peaceful cottage in the countryside where he’ll be free to paint whatever he pleases and sleep all day and read as many books as he wants is his dream. But it doesn’t quite feel the same as Liam’s.

He’s drawn out of his reverie by the sound of Harry’s laughter and he looks across the remnants of their lunch to see Liam’s head thrown back in crinkly-eyed amusement and the prince’s hand resting rather comfortably on Liam’s shoulder. _He’s_ never heard Harry laugh like that in the three or so days he’s known him—deep belly laughs that make his cheeks turn pink and those eyes of his water and his whole body shake.

Zayn stands up abruptly and tries to tamp down the inexplicable spurt of anger at the sight and says with forced cheerfulness, “Well, we must be on our way, Liam—thank you for the grub!”

Harry and Liam look at him incredulously and Zayn feels tempted to yell, “What?” They’re both staring at him like he’s the crazy one. When he _clearly_ isn’t the crazy one because there is his Harry laughing and blushing and canoodling like he’s known _his_ Liam for years, and years, and years and they only met less than an hour ago and it’s all ridiculous and absurd—which are two words that mean the same thing—and he wants to put a stop to it.

When no one responds, Zayn breathes in deeply and mutters something about taking a stroll because lunch made him disagreeable. He’ll need an hour or two to overcome his embarrassing urge to have a tantrum—Zayn’s never had an urge to have a tantrum in his life, he’s always been the steady, quiet one. He turns away and walks as briskly as he can without running away. Perhaps there was something in that food Liam gave them.

 

-

 

Zayn sets them a punishing pace for the last few hours of sunlight that afternoon, and tries to ignore the nagging voice that tells him the only reason he’s being so brutal about getting to the next town is because he was jealous. He isn’t jealous. He does not get jealous.

He also tries not to think about how surly he’d been when Liam offered them a pair of sturdy horses, a change of clothes, and a bit of coin. Or how he’d practically tossed Prince Harry onto his horse and told him to ride. Then barely waved goodbye to his best friend, whom he wasn’t going to see for years, probably, and who would come back some long-bearded, wrinkly old creature in homespun robes, yodelling discordantly about knights and ladies while he strummed on a poorly-tuned instrument.

He feels bad about it now.

Just as he’s about to signal to Harry to stop for a second so they can figure out whether to stay in the next village, a few kilometres away, he feels a sharp pain in the side of his skull and falls off his horse. He hits the ground with an agonising thud and the horse rears before galloping off.

He can hear Harry saying his name, asking if he’s all right but it’s muffled, almost as though he’s far away. And when he manages to open his eyes, he finds himself looking into shocking blue orbs attached to a broadly-grinning face that looks slightly orange in his delirium.

And then he knows nothing at all.

 

-

 

Zayn comes to. His skull is pounding, and he feels like he’s spent a night and a day drinking mead and then asked every second person to punch him in the face. He groans and opens his eyes to a starlit sky.

“Ah, so you’re awake.”

He turns towards the grating voice and finds a vaguely familiar man grinning at him, blue eyes and a shock of blond hair and a very wide grin.

“Who are you?”

The boy doesn’t stop smiling—Zayn wonders for a moment if he’s a bit dodgy in the head—and says, a bit of an Irish lilt coming through, “Well, they call me, The Golden Fox, world-renowned highwayman and consumer of fine spirits.”

Another voice pipes up but Zayn doesn’t try to find its owner, his head feels like it’s on fire. “You’re not the ‘Golden Fox’, you twit, you’re the ‘Golden Parakeet’, we’ve been over this, Niall.”

Niall, the blond, leaps to his feet, clearly offended. “We have not spoken about it, Louis—you just came up with that rubbish name and I was too excited to be your partner to argue. Well, I’ve grown up now and I want to be called the Golden Fox.”

The other voice snorts and Zayn hears them walking closer, feels their feet treading on the ground like repeated blows to the head. He looks up into the face of a man who seems just as inexplicably happy as his cohort. “So, our dear friend has finally awoken—you’ve been snoring over there for hours. We had to knock out your noble friend to stop him from fretting like a crazed housewife.”

At the mention of Harry, Zayn sits up, regardless of the pain blaring in his head, and tries not to panic. “Where’s Harry? Tell me where he is _now_.”

“Now, now, no need to get too excited, he’s fine. Perfectly safe, in fact.” He points a little ways and Zayn sees Harry slumped in the grass, looking remarkably peaceful. He breathes a sigh of relief.

“But he won’t be if you don’t give us what we want.”

And just like that, he’s tensing again. “What is it you want, you miserable vagabond? I demand that you release him this instant. Or there will be hell to pay.”

The two criminals look at him and burst into laughter. Zayn sighs, and struggles to his feet—it’s an arduous action and he has to bite his mouth to stop from moaning at the ache in the side of his head. When he’s finally mostly upright, swaying on his feet but at least standing, he pulls at the sword at his hip (the first clue that these robbers aren’t particularly circumspect in the execution of their chosen careers) and brandishes it weakly. “I challenge you, whichever one of you, to a duel. If I win, then you will let me and my companion go. If I lose, then—you are free to exact whatever forfeit you see fit. And then let us go.”

“Oh, ho, ‘forfeit’!” crows the one called Louis. “Looks like we’ve got a smart fellow over here—look at you using those fancy words.”

Zayn frowns. He’s sure that ‘forfeit’ is a fairly commonplace two-syllable word.

But now he feels all the more compelled to win this impromptu fight because he couldn’t bear being bested by an apparently dim-witted jester and his trained golden parakeet.

The one called Louis beats his chest. “Well, good knight, you have made a grave mistake challenging The Great Tommo, most feared highwayman in the land, legendary lover and quite talented poet, if I do say so myself.” Zayn doubts those last two are true, and given the fact that he’s still holding his sword, the first is patently false as well.

He raises his sword and points it at The Great Tommo, smiles faintly, and says, “En guarde.”

 

-

 

The fight doesn’t last very long. In fact it lasts all of ten seconds before Louis is knocked unconscious and Niall’s backing away, handing him the lead to a horse and glaring down at his accomplice—clearly still he's piqued about the name issue.

Zayn doesn’t waste any time, lifting Harry gingerly onto the saddle of the horse, and galloping away as fast as it can carry them.

 

-

 

The inn is cosy, even with its bare furnishings, the wide bed with a lumpy-looking mattress that looks heavenly after four days of rough travel, and the warm tea on the dressing table, a gift he’d managed to charm out of the owner’s wife with a genuine smile

Just as Zayn is set to put Harry down on the bed, the man in question wakes up with a start, and the first word on his lips is, “Zayn?”

Zayn tries to ignore the frisson that runs along his spine at his name on Harry’s lips.

Harry smiles up at him soft and sleep-mussed but alert, and says, “They hit you over the head. And then they hit me over the head because I wouldn’t shut up. How did we get away?”

Nodding, Zayn realises that he’s still holding Harry’s shoulder and quickly steps back. “Well, that’s a long story. But we’re both tired, I say we sleep and see where we are in the morning.”

Harry looks at the bed beneath him and then around the room, raises his brow.

“This was the only available room.” A truth. “I can sleep on the floor, if you’d like.” Definitely a lie. Zayn doesn’t intend to put his back anywhere near the hardwood floor if he can help it.

Harry shakes his head quickly. “No, no, of course we must share. I’ll have to warn you though, I’m a cuddler.”

Zayn smiles, and tilts his head toward the steaming urns of hot water and the tea. “We’ve got enough water for quick baths, and the inn owner’s wife sent us up some tea. So—would you like to go first or shall I?”

He feels Harry’s gaze run down his muddy, wrinkled shirt and it feels like he’s not wearing a shirt at all.

“No,” Harry says, “You have the bath first, I can wait.”

 

-

 

It’s when Zayn has washed his back, cleaned the wound on his side gingerly and managed to get the grime and sweat out of his hair—all with the feeling of someone’s eyes boring into the line of his spine and trying to tamp down his very physical response to that—that he hears the snicker. He turns around and there’s Harry rolling on the bed, chortling about something and pointing in his direction.

“What?”

The boy can’t even breathe, he’s too busy laughing and then he gasps out, “I… is that a tattoo of a girl on your arm?”

Zayn covers his left arm self-consciously before chuckling himself—it’s funny, even he can admit it. The tattoo was one of those follies of true love that one often regrets. “Yes, what of it?”

“You must tell me the story of how you got it—it has to be good.”

Zayn bows his head and sighs, “I fell in love with a beautiful milk-maid just outside of Munich. I thought, at the time, that we would be married and raise ten fat German-speaking children together. But, no such luck, she ended up marrying someone else.”

Harry chuckles again, stands up from the bed slowly and walks toward him, reaches out carefully in case Zayn wants to pull away, and touches the ink lines scored into the muscled skin on his arm. “She was very beautiful,” he whispers.

Zayn holds himself still, as still as he can, stops breathing, even while his heart beat ratchets up to an impossible pace in response to those cool fingers running across his biceps. He looks up and meets Harry’s eyes, and says simply, “Yes, she was.”

When Harry pulls his hand away, Zayn doesn’t reach out and put his hand back as he so desperately wants too—but it’s a near thing. He looks up and sees Harry undoing the buttons on his shirt, and his mouth dries at the sight of each inch of revealed skin.

“Can I take my bath now?”

Zayn nods dumbly but doesn’t move. He’s frozen in place, hopelessly hypnotised by the piece of art being slowly unveiled before him. He licks his tongue surreptitiously and thinks about licking the nipple he just saw between Harry’s fingers, maybe bite into it and feel Harry arch into his mouth, and—

“Oh dear gods, what in the seven dimensions of hell is _that_?”

Harry looks down in the direction of Zayn’s slightly horrified stare and laughs, pulling his shirt apart to reveal—Zayn tilts his head as he tries to interpret what his mind is seeing—a face staring back at him?

“Is that… a butterfly?” He’s trying to hold back a snort of laughter.

Harry blushes. “Hey, they’re very gentle creatures but beautiful, there’s a great deal to admire in a butterfly.”

Zayn looks at him sceptically and says, “You’re very lucky you’re so pretty because that tattoo is… well, I’m not sure I have many words for it right now.”

Grinning, Harry splays his hand across his own abdomen. “I guess I can’t make fun of your old almost-wife now.”

Zayn, distracted by the sight of Harry’s hands and the ripple of muscle at his torso, just mumbles, “No, no, I guess we’re even.”

 

-

 

They are lying side-by-side—have been lying side-by-side for what is surely more than an hour, and neither of them is close to sleep.

“Are you asleep?”

Zayn rolls his eyes in the dark. “I wasn’t asleep but if I had been asleep you would’ve woken me up, which defeats the point of asking.”

Harry ignores his grumping, and leans up on his elbow, turns his body to face Zayn’s. The night is clear, and the gibbous moon gleams right through the open window, and sets Harry’s features alight. Zayn is sure he’s never seen anything prettier but that might be a sign that his concussion is more serious than he thought it was.

“You know,” he says just for something to say to stop himself from leaning up and doing something stupid like kissing a prince while he’s conscious and capable of remembering, “We probably reach your castle tomorrow, Master Harold.”

Harry’s eyes meet his and there’s something floating in the depths of them that puts Zayn on edge, makes his fingers dig into the mattress beneath.

“We do.” Harry places his hand on the arm without the tattoo, a casual trail of fingers drifting aimlessly.

Zayn gulps. “And then, I leave you to your family and your betrothed.”

Harry nods. “You do.”

Zayn tries not to feel a bit hurt at that, he has absolutely no reason to and yet he does. He sucks in a breath when the questing hand creeps up to his shoulder, and Harry’s fingers play against his clavicle and move, more purposefully, down the line of his sternum, testing the too-fast heart beating at his ribcage.

“And then I take my hard-earned money and you go on to serve as Exchequer of the Realm or whatever it is that younger son’s do.”

There’s a sad undertow to the “Yes,” Harry utters.

And Zayn, fool that he is, does the only thing he can to take it away and leans up to push his mouth into Harry’s. Clumsy, forceful and Harry replies in kind, shifting so he’s half lying on top of Zayn and bringing their mouths together more fully. There’s a panicked edge to it, an acknowledgment, that it’s this night and perhaps there will never be another—but here and now, this instant beneath the moon, is all that matters.

Zayn rolls them over so that Harry lies on his back and takes control of the kiss, slows it down to a crawl, swirls his tongue against Harry’s and moans at the feel of it.

When Harry’s hands reach down to cup his arse, Zayn pushes into the unmistakeable heat of his cock. The two of them buck into each other and the need to rush returns, each kiss turns more frantic than the last, and the fingers grappling at the waistband of breeches scratch at skin and leave livid marks in their wake.

And then they’re both naked, and Harry wraps those long-fingered hands around the both of them, presses them together. Zayn licks at his own palm and joins him in the effort, the new slickness, compounded by their precome makes it better. He leans down to bite at the red of Harry’s lips, hard enough to make it hurt, and Harry arches up into the sensation, breathes out, “Zayn,” like he can’t help himself.

They’re thrusting into each other now, uncoordinated but the sensation of damp skin sticking wetly to damp skin, of fingers tangling in the race to reach the peak, of Harry’s lips sucking relentlessly at the pulse at his throat and then pressing wet, open-mouthed kisses on whatever spot of skin he can reach, and the two of them mumbling, cursing even as they try not to shout loud enough to wake the other inn patrons, and the feel of their cocks rubbing against each other, squelch of slick skin.  

Zayn’s hips stutter first and he swipes his thumb across the sensitive tip of Harry’s penis, whispers breathlessly, “Come for me—come with me.” He leans down to bite into the dark pink nipple—hard enough for his teeth to leave a mark and that’s all it takes for Harry to gasp out and spurt into Zayn’s waiting fingers, wet streaks across the butterfly wings on his abdomen, his body trembling like it might never stop. Zayn is quick to follow, his teeth still grazing Harry's chest as he mouths his name into the skin and comes warm and wet, keeps their fingers linked around their cocks until the spine-rippling come-down, until they both let out over-sensitised whimpers and pull back.

He lifts his head to find Harry’s mouth again, a slow, sweet kiss. And then he rests his forehead against Harry's jaw, his heartbeat stumbling still.

He opens his eyes in time to see Harry lift his soiled fingers to his mouth, and lick first one, then the next, and then all the rest clean, seductive without even trying, as he rumbles out, voice husky like his throat is torn through, “Delicious, you and me.”

Zayn laughs, laps at the remnants of the two of them on Harry’s top lip, falls deep into a kiss that he doesn’t really want to end, and then says ineloquently, “Yeah.”

 

-

 

Things look different in the harsh light of the morning. Or at least, Zayn tries his hardest to make them so.

He doesn’t speak to Harry except to grunt out a few orders— _wake up, let’s ride, hurry up_ —and he tries his level best not to look at him, or at least get caught doing so. It’s for the best really. He’s a soldier and Harry’s a prince, there’s nothing good that could come out of it. Hadn’t the past few days proved that incontrovertibly? Just thinking of the sheer number of tragedies that befell them makes Zayn dizzy.

It would never work. If they didn’t kill each other within a day, they’d drive each other crazy over time. So what if Harry could be surprisingly sweet and funny? So what if he had good hands and a sinful mouth that looked like it could take him in one swallow, and that he had proved last night that he liked to swallow—

He shakes his head hard enough to rattle the few brains he has left—because why is he even thinking about that again?

Harry has taken the cue from him and refuses to speak.

Zayn sort of desperately wants to hear his voice say anything, anything at all. So he grows more irascible as they draw nearer to the castle, less than a day’s ride away, and blurts out ever more obnoxious demands, and Harry doesn’t bite at all, never says anything, just keeps his impossible green eyes trained on the ground.

When Zayn sees the peacock-blue turrets with their printed flags waving on the horizon, a sign that they—this trip—is finally at an end, he breathes out a sigh. The sooner this is over, the sooner he can get on with his life and forget it all.

He doesn’t look at Harry again. He can’t.

Mostly because he’s afraid of what he’ll do if he does.

 

-

 

When he rides away from the castle, saddlebags heavy with coin and nothing but a glimpse of Harry’s curly hair as the prince turned away and thanked him peremptorily, he tries not to look back.  But the feel of eyes digging into the back of his neck as he reaches the far side of the moat makes him pause, if only for a moment, and he does turn for one last time.

He sees nothing but stone walls and empty windows.

 

 

 

_Months later_

Zayn tramps through the woods surrounding his small but comfy farmhouse. No cows but he does have a small herd of dogs and there’s quite a bit of edible game in this forest. He has been thoroughly and committedly lazy these past months. It’s nice. He gets to wake up whenever he wants, sleep in till all hours of the day, putter about with his books. It’s all very _nice_.

The truth of it is, he’s bored. Out of his mind bored. Drill a hole through his head with a horse shoe bored. And he knows it’s only natural for a man of action to be very bored by a sedentary life. He expected the adjustment to be challenging. And it’s not even that he doesn’t like not doing anything—he was always rather solitary as a child, preferring to spend his days alone, reading books, doodling in the sand, nothing particularly useful. Circumstances had pushed him towards doing something more with his life because he hadn’t wanted to end up cleaning chimneys for a living.

Now, he’s settled in a house of his own. After more than a decade of travelling, of never resting in one place for longer than a few months, he finds he doesn’t quite know how to stay still. His heart yearns for something— _not_ someone—else.

It’s irrelevant that he wakes up breathless from dreams of emerald eyes and curly hair caught in his fingers. Or that those dreams more often than not drive him to slip his hand under the covers and yank at himself until he goes cross-eyed and can barely see straight. No. That’s irrelevant.

He lifts his easel up and positions it at the lip of the bridge. He’s wanted to paint this vista for months now, a perfect perspective of the lush forest and the river moving swiftly, bloated from the early spring rains, and just above the treeline, the turrets and spires of the nearby village he occasionally visits for a draught at the local tavern or a shopping trip.

So when he hears the shout as he’s walking over the bridge that leads to his little property and sees a rider coming towards him, the horse frothing at the mouth, and the person atop it, riotous curls flying in the wind, his mouth drops open in shock. He pinches himself because he’s fairly sure one of his dreams started just like this, and ended with him pushing Harry over the side of his horse and rutting into him like an untamed stallion while Harry neighed in pleasure… so perhaps he didn’t neigh… the sound of someone neighing wasn’t particularly desirable, he would have to revisit that dream.

He looks up again and the mirage isn’t a mirage at all, not the product of some fever dream. The bane of his existence and the one person he can’t stop dreaming about is riding towards him like he has the hounds of hell chasing after him. Zayn is swiftly alert, checks the sprawling fields in a three-kilometre radius around Harry—hellhounds chasing the boy isn’t something so outlandish given that wherever he goes, trouble is sure to follow.

Thankfully, there are no rabid creatures on the loose.

It is eerily quiet though.

And then,

“Zayn, watch out, behind you!”

Zayn turns only to be met with an arrow whizzing past his ear. He lets out a curse, swivels to dodge another arrow, and loses his balance on the edge of the bridge, screams (he was fairly sure he’d never made such a sound in his entire life) as he tumbles into the gushing river below. It’s only when he hits the pulsing water that he remembers.

“Help me, I can’t swim!”

Before he’s gotten along too far with his limbs flailing, struggling to break the surface every few seconds to try to yell and only managing to choke on water and sink again, two strong arms wrap around him and pull him upwards. When they finally reach the shore, he falls onto his back heavily and tries to cough out his lungs in an effort to breathe.

Harry draws him close and rubs his back soothingly. Zayn lets himself collapse into him, presses his mouth into his shoulder to breathe in the traces of his scent the river didn’t wash away. He looks up and Harry says with a soft curl to his mouth, “I saved _you_ this time.”

Zayn beams back dreamily, the sun is piercing and it gives Harry’s face a bit of a halo and he looks almost angelic. Zayn thinks he could spend the rest of the day right here, basking in the adoring little smile on Harry’s face, and the thumb caressing the line of his chin up to the curve of his lower lip with paralysing tenderness. But then reality comes rushing back when he realises he’s lying wet by the river bank and there’s a smarting ache to the skin at his back from when he pancaked into the water like an idiot. His smile falls off his face. “After you tried to kill me, you mean? Again.”

Harry pouts. “That wasn’t my fault! It was… actually I have no idea who it was.”

“Crazy thieves or something worse that you’ve brought to my doorstep, you brat.” Harry bows his head, chastened and his lips move in the shape of ‘sorry’.

Zayn doesn’t move from his comfortable position in the cage of Harry’s arms as someone who was even remotely angry would do, he just informs the prince, “I was living a very peaceful and exciting life without you, you know.”

Harry doesn’t seem to believe him, which makes sense given that Zayn’s hands are climbing all over his chest like he’s trying to touch every piece of him in the space of a second. He says with princely hauteur, “Oh, well, I’ll just leave then. It’s not like I was coming to see _you_ anyway, I was just passing through. On my way to do very important things elsewhere.”

Zayn looks at him incredulously. Before he met Harry, he was sure Liam was the worst liar he'd ever seen. “I suppose you just happened to find your way to my farm—even though it’s kilometres away from the nearest village and if you step a few paces that way you fall off the edge of the earth and directly perpendicular to that is the Barren Sea, which no one goes to because there are sea urchins there the size of small carts who are very capable of snapping off limbs.”

Harry scrunches his face up as though he’s trying to come up with an even better lie but quickly gives up. “I may have run away from home.”

Zayn sits up and looks around again, tries to see if he can hear anything or anyone moving in the forest. “So those people who shot at me, they’re palace guards?”

“I have no idea—I don’t think so. Or they might have caught me long before now, don’t you think?”

Zayn lifts his hand up to touch Harry’s drying curls, and tries not to look like a lovesick calf while he’s at it but he has an idea that he fails at that by the increasingly insufferable smirk on the prince’s face.

“So, did you miss me?” Harry asks.

“Not even a little bit.” His fingers drag across Harry’s scalp, reveal the lie for what it is, and his groin tightens at the purr even such a simple touch elicits. “So, now that you’re here, am I still to call you, Prince Harold or should I opt for ‘liege’ or ‘my lord’?”

Harry grins and says with his old arrogance, “You may call me ‘Master.’”

Laughing, Zayn drags their faces close together. The kiss explodes like fireworks he once saw on a winter night in China, they’d lit up the sky in a burst of colour that near-blinded him when he’d first seen them. He moans into it, pushing himself up and as close to Harry as he can get in this awkward position.

“Well, well, well, what do we have here?” Zayn pulls away from Harry’s lips reluctantly and glares towards the offensive but oddly familiar voice. He’s finding, in the five seconds he’s had to kiss Harry like he’s got the rest of eternity to do so, that he doesn’t much like to be interrupted. It’s a killable offense even.

And there standing above them are literally the two last people he expected or wanted to see. Ever.

“Did you miss me, old friend?”

Zayn pulls himself out of Harry’s arms and replies the blue-eyed devil in front of him with a sneer, “Hardly. Why are you here, Louis or should I call you The Great Tommo?”

Louis shrugs magnanimously, as though he’s doing the world a favour. “I go by Louis now, Lou if we’re good friends.” Zayn wishes he’d actually do the world a favour by dropping dead.

Niall, whose hair has grown longer and shaggier, gives an infectious smile that Zayn responds to instinctively before regaining control of his mouth. He launches into the tale, “We thought we’d come to find you—because Louis had this grand idea of getting his big revenge for your embarrassing him with a single blow. But we didn’t know where to find you. So we were wandering the forests all sad-like, and then we see this guy galloping across a field like he’s got the devil chasing him. We decided that he was probably on his way to you because he had a bit of a crazed look in his eye—like he did when he thought you were dead. So we did, and now here we are, tired, worn, hungry….” Zayn ignores the pleading tone in Niall’s voice and gets ready to tell both of them to bugger off when a wild ululating yell interrupts and suddenly a wild-haired Liam is throwing himself on Louis' back and pressing a dagger to his neck.

Liam looks up with a steely expression, and practically spits at Louis as he says, “I’ve been tracking these two for a few days—realised they were coming to your place. I did mean to stop them in time but I got side-tracked.” He shakes Louis’ head by pulling on his hair again and then incongruously excited, he adds, “Did you know that the town over that way has a local singing competition every May Day? Remarkable, isn’t it?”

Zayn can feel a headache coming on and he wishes that he could get a hard, bitter drink—something strong enough to knock him out until everyone but Harry goes away. He does ask, not expecting a coherent answer in the slightest, “What are you doing here, Li? I thought you were headed off to become a bard?”

Liam lets go of Louis' head and lets it pop against the grass but he doesn’t get up, effectively keeping 'The Great Tommo' out of commission. Zayn looks down at Louis and starts at the slightly dreamy expression on his face—perhaps someone was enjoying Liam sitting on him a little too much.

“I made it all the way to Scotland and the academy only to be turned away because I was too tall and don't have a natural hunched back. Apparently, you also have to be a hundred years old to even be considered for entry, which is ridiculous if you ask me.”

Zayn doesn’t inquire any further because he honestly doesn’t want to know. “I suppose you could all spend the night here,” he says grudgingly.

“Lovely,” crows Louis. He rubs his stomach and yawns dramatically, “I feel rather famished and I could use a good night’s sleep. Chasing princes halfway across the country is incredibly hard work.”

Zayn bites down on the impulse to inform Louis that no one asked him to follow Harry across the country. He won’t admit that he does find the bandit a bit endearing for all his bombast.

Still, he almost wishes he could rescind his offer. He doesn’t often have guests—he doesn’t _like_ having guests at all is the thing. And now, he thinks churlishly, with these buffoons eating him out of house and home, he’s not going to have a chance to sleep or read that book he just purchased on dragons and their natural habitats. More importantly, he won’t be able to have carnal relations with Master Harry on every flat surface his house possesses. And that’s a shame.

He blushes faintly and his breeches grow inexplicably snug, so much so that he has to pause and turn his body away from his friends to adjust himself. Now that he thinks on it, he quite likes the sound of ‘Master Harry’.

He hangs back as the lads head to his house—they’re laughing as if they’ve known each other for years. Louis has somehow climbed onto Liam’s back and is ruffling his hair. Liam doesn’t look at all bothered by this and seems to be leaning backwards so Louis can ruffle him even more. Niall is trying to drag Louis off Liam, presumably to attack his hair. Or maybe he's attempting to climb the two of them like a vine, it's unclear from Zayn's vantage point. And Harry is pointing and laughing as if it’s the funniest thing he’s ever seen.

Zayn huffs out a laugh and runs to catch up.

 

**Epilogue**

Zayn didn’t ask for this. He _really_ didn’t.

He’s begun to wonder if he should take the tragedy that is his life up with the gods because surely this relentless misfortune isn’t normal. Perhaps there’s a family curse his mother neglected to tell him about, some uncle who bedded a thousand virgins, an aunt who drank unicorn blood, that he’s paying the price for.

He ducks as a sword whizzes by his ear, rolls to the side when a blast of fire hits the spot where he was standing, leaving nothing but a charred stump. He could’ve been that charred stump if his reflexes weren’t so well developed—or worse yet, that thing could’ve gotten his hair.

“All I did,” he mumbles, “Was suggest the possibility that dragons might be real, and wouldn’t it be fun if they were.”

In hindsight, that had been a foolish mistake on his part. When your friend group consists of three walking calamities—Harry, Louis and Niall—and Liam who was generally content to go with whatever mischief Louis suggested with a sort of star-struck look of adoration on his face and was apparently incapable of saying no to Niall, there was no end to the number of terrible things that could happen.

He knew this, had always known it—and yet he’d still opened his big mouth.

And now he’s going to die, be burned to a crisp, never to be seen again, never to laugh with his friends and spend days frolicking on his farm, never to kiss Harry again, or fuck him in the stables with the scent of hay in their nostrils, or bend him over the kitchen table with his fingers stuffed in his mouth to keep him quiet—Zayn let out an especially sad sigh at that one, it’s still one of his best memories.

And then he hears a familiar scream. Several of them, in fact, but one stands out above the rest, the one that seems deeply-connected to every muscle in his body and makes it impossible for him to ignore.

He shakes his head, and mutters, “I’m _coming_.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading and any and all feedback you gift me with. Hope it was at least vaguely a fun ride <3.


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